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Monday, July 21, 2014

She told Charlie Rose that her
recommendation to the European Union is to take advantage of the
shot-down MH17 tragedy to “Immediately accelerate efforts to find
alternatives to Gazprom.”

In an interview with Charlie Rose that's airing Thursday night, Hillary Clinton says that the MH17 attack can "probably" be blamed on pro-Russian rebels.
While she cautions that investigation into the attack is still ongoing and we still don't know who's behind it, Clinton believes the clues point towards pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
"Who had the equipment? It's obviously an anti-aircraft missile," she said.

"The Ukrainian government has been quick to blame it on terrorists, which is their name for the Russian insurgents, and there does seem to be some growing awareness that it probably had to be Russian insurgents."
If these separatists did have anti-aircraft missiles, she goes on, the weapons were probably supplied by Russia.

Clinton also mentioned that "if there is evidence linking Russia to this" — something we don't yet have — then that should "inspire" Europe to tighten sanctions on Russia and reduce its dependency on Gazprom, the large Russian natural-gas supplier.

For more background, here's our earlier cardstack on the Russia-Ukraine crisis.Here's the full segment:

Moscow-based Gazprom is the largest producer of natural gas in
the world and one of the globe’s largest companies. A few weeks back on
June 26th they announced that
they would settle contracts with China using yuan or rubles instead of
dollars. This move came about one month after Russia and China announced
a record $400B gas deal. That’s a whole lot of dollars that won’t be needed in the international economy.